


Perfidy

by RedFlagsAndDiamonds



Series: "Life of the House" One-Shots [1]
Category: Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, Spider-Man: Homecoming (2017), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Angst, Babies, Cheating, Childbirth, F/M, Hurt No Comfort, Hurt Pepper, Infidelity, M/M, Marriage, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-31
Updated: 2017-12-31
Packaged: 2019-02-24 10:28:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,848
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13211850
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RedFlagsAndDiamonds/pseuds/RedFlagsAndDiamonds
Summary: Pepper goes into labor unexpectedly while Tony is "away."Implied Peter Parker/Tony Stark





	Perfidy

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Ownership](https://archiveofourown.org/works/12860025) by [DaScribbla](https://archiveofourown.org/users/DaScribbla/pseuds/DaScribbla). 



> This is set in the same AU as DaScribbla's "Private and Intimate Life of the House" series. I cannot recommend her work enough.

It’s around 8:30 AM when Pepper first notices the muscles in her back tightening involuntarily. She can’t explain then why she didn’t simply buzz for Kirsten and ask her to call Dr. Rothschild, and she can’t later. It would have been easy to clear the list for the day, since, “whoops, it looks like I’ll be having a baby somewhere inside of the next twenty-four hours” usually comes off as a pretty acceptable excuse for cancelling – even on a food date with a former first lady.

Instead, she powers through it - just like everything else in this constantly digitally retouched mess that’s been the past eight months of married life – and smiles winningly during brunch, keeps up her trademarked, golden chortle throughout the conference calls, and ignores the way her belly tightens into a mass of rock with each shooting pain by late afternoon.

It’s easier to actually pick up the phone and quaveringly ask the AI to call her husband, than to admit why she’s been putting off the option for the past thirteen hours – it’s Saturday, and before Saturday comes Friday night, and she knows better than most what happens between six and twelve on the eve of the weekend. Really, there’s not much shock when the ringtone buzzes and buzzes, and finally lands on Tony’s smartass inbox recording of the week. But still, the knowledge that he couldn’t be bothered to zip his fly up for six seconds to answer a call from his nine-month pregnant wife? That stings. Just a bit.

In the end, it’s Happy who finds her groaning on the bathroom floor nineteen paces away from the King Cole Bar, and helps her stagger out to the curb before the St. Regis can ask for more than an advertising opportunity.

The seats feel like they’re chafing the skin off her bones by the time they’re stuck in backed-up traffic over the main highway, Happy clutching her hand from the driver’s seat and shouting that they’re almost there, its gonna be okay, he’ll have Tony on the line in just a minute, and it’s strange that her amniotic sac chooses that precise moment to rupture. Liquid trickles in warm streams down her thighs, staining the leather upholstery, and if that isn’t poetic justice she doesn’t know how else to label it. Maybe the smell can be a subtle reminder, one day, that she nearly pushed out his goddamn baby in his goddamn Mercedes while he was somewhere in a presidential suite, drinking post-coital cocktails with a boy who was too young to imbibe.

 

Pepper isn’t sure when exactly Happy gives up and makes a sharp pull out of the traffic lane, but when she opens her eyes blearily as he’s carrying her through the door of a walk-in Urgent Care, shouting for help, it takes her several seconds too long to realize that the hard, roundish lump protruding between her thighs is actually the top of a little human skull.

 

Despite some impressively lucrative poster-girl offers from Ina May Gaskin, Pepper had fully intended from pre-conception (accident though it was) to be drugged to the gills when this child made it’s ultimate appearance. As it is, there’s no time for the triage nurses to do more than yank down her slacks and blood-soaked underwear before they help her crawl, hands and knees, onto the exam gurney, and there’s no hope of an epidural in this place. She’s pretty sure that the shouting in the next room is the GP on duty trying to reach an obstetrician.

“He put me on h- I can’t believe this, he put me on hold!”

Then again, Happy ‘s probably leaving yet another scream-message on Tony’s phone, and truth be told Pepper’s long since lost her ability to care.

“You’re doing just great sweetie, you’re already about half-way there –“

A freckled nurse presses cold towels against the back of her neck as she howls through another contraction shooting up her spine. Spots start dancing in front of her eyes, and any second now she’s going to throw up, there’s a sickly sour taste at the back of her throat –

“Pep – honey –“

She can smell him before she sees him, ruffled hair, jeans, wannabe cowboy boots and that age-softened grey-t shirt that she knows from experience means he had sex in the last hour.

Yeah, definitely gonna throw up.

She barely misses his boots. Barely.

Her brain’s swimming with a soup of hormones, rage, excruciating pain, and an old, clammy sense of betrayal, and one way or another it starts forcing it’s way out through breathless scream after shrill, breathless scream, words getting tangled up and lost in the anger, but Tony seems to get the gist. He backs away, hands raised like he’s fending off an active shooter, brown eyes blown wide.

Somebody near her hips mutters something that sounds like “dystocia.”

There’s a distinctly sharp curve to his lower lip that she thinks means he’s trying to fend off emotion, but it’s hard for her to remember right now. Not when she wants to climb off this rapidly soaking mattress, and sock her right fist into the kid’s teeth – the one glancing into the room like a frightened toddler as Tony slips through the swinging door and leads him away, a lined hand cupping the back of his neck.

 

 

*

 

 

It’s a girl.

“Maria” for Tony’s mother, and “Josephine” for Pepper’s childhood hero.

Right now she’s puckering her lips and staring up at her mother, who’s humming something from an old movie that she can’t remember the name of. Something from the eighties. Daryl Hannah. She’d liked it back in college, she’d liked it a lot.

She hasn’t seen Tony since the flare up last night, and in some infuriatingly stereotypic female display of illogic, she’s actually a little disappointed.

On top of aching hips, and a sore, swollen vagina, it’s not been a heartwarming entry into mom-hood.

Not that you have much right to complain when you’re wrapped in silk sheets and your baby is wearing a sleeper designed by Versace.

Kirsten had stopped by once they’d been transferred to the maternity center, as per the once-upon-a-time original plan, and dropped off the Baby Bag, but aside from a few blood-letting nurses and a complimentary personal shopper bearing a Happy Birthday besprinkled cupcake, there hasn’t been much activity on Pepper’s stretch of ward floor.

After all of her Parenting Magazine prep reading and that socially mandatory subscription to The Bump, supposedly an uninterrupted time of solitude with one’s child is something to be longed for, but it only serves as a reminder that her expectations of this moment are coming up short. Ideally (and she doesn’t understand how and why she’s still this naïve) Tony would have been here to hold their daughter and try to cover up his feelings with a few smart-aleck comments, even though they’re both well aware that he _is_ capable of being tender when he thinks it’ll go unnoticed. It was how they made this baby, after all.

Pepper wonders for a moment if Peter Parker’s aware of that too.

There must be something to the power of suggestion, because the door intercom beeps, a familiar voice sheepishly mumbles “Room service?” and because Pepper’s a glutton for punishment and feeling vindictive, she buzzes him in.

Tony doesn’t look like he’s slept, which she finds somewhat satisfying. One of his fingers is bandaged up, presumably related to the steaming china bowl he’s carrying on a plastic tray, which has been artfully molded to resemble cut glass.

There’s also a tulip wrapped in blue satin ribbon next to the silverware. He’s really pulling out all the stops.

“So apparently they have this program where, um, dads can do a round in the kitchen – sort’ve a joke, I guess, the one time mom gets a reprieve before the rest of her life starts, um… “

He’s set the platter down on the bedside table. Whatever’s in that bowl might have been pasta once in it’s life, but it’s been boiled down to goop now.

“T’s um, cottage cheese, they said it helps build the milk up…”

“I’m form-“

“-formula feeding, like… we… discussed, yeah.” He trails off, suddenly finding the dial on his third best Rolex incredibly interesting.

Once she might have bitten back a smile, pretended all was forgiven just for this moment of peace, but they’re past that now.

“Please tell me he’s not waiting outside with dessert.”

Tony has the rare tact to look contrite.

“He spent the night at his Aunt’s.”

“Well, isn’t that worth marking in the event calendar.”

“Okay, I messed up.” He finally blurts out, hands raised. “I turned the phone off, it was dumb, I –“

“This is your daughter, by the way.” Pepper interrupts, glancing down at Maria dozing in the crook of her arm. “I wasn’t sure if you two had met.”

Tony goes silent for a moment.

“She’s got your nose, thank God.” He finally, pathetically mumbles.

“I’ll stop you there.” The tone is harsher than she might have intended, but after an infinitesimal second of reflection she decides it didn’t matter.

“This is not about you, and your stunted sense of morality and basic right or wrong, this is about us now, do –do you even grasp that concept? Because sometimes it feels like you’ve never really understood what marriage means, but this is about being a _parent,_ Tony – do you have any idea what that entails? Do –“

“Yes.”

“No. She’s going to need food, clothes, doctors, dentists, school, daily care, support, unconditional love, and I wish, I really, _really_ wish I wasn’t so afraid that you think I can order all that from the babies r us while you play sugar daddy – she’s going to rely on you for love and safety for the next twenty-one years, and if you can let her down so spectacularly before she even breathes oxygen for the first time, then I don’t want you near her.”

It’s tempting to focus on Maria so she doesn’t have to look at the way he’s started shaking, but she holds firm.

“I never wanted to do the jobs of two parents, but we both know I can and I will, so walk out that door, get a cab to Queens, and sort out your priorities. Don’t call me, I’ll call you.”

She keeps her eyes on him for the nine mercifully silent minutes it takes him to do as he’s told, even through the terrifying pause at the doorway when he glances back and it looks, for a moment, like he might try to speak, but then the moment is over and he’s gone.

Maria snuffles unconsciously, and Pepper cuddles her up to her chest. Tony doesn’t take well to ultimatums. And he knows her a little too well – he’ll remember that halfway to Queens.

It’s a good thing that the _mega-riche_ don’t usually traffic in “normal,” enough so that their children only understand it in the abstract. Otherwise this might all take some explaining, in a few years time.

 


End file.
